Drink
by Yoko-cw
Summary: He Tried To Drown His Problems In Vodka. He Tried To Forget. But It Seemed That No Matter How Many Bottles Piled Up, The Screams Never Stopped Echoing... Hiei POV


**DRINK-SDA-Hiei POV  
CHELSEA WELSH**

_Summary-He Tried To Drown His Problems In Vodka. He Tried To Forget. But It Seemed That No Matter How Many Bottles Piled Up, The Screams Never Stopped Echoing..._

I hate alcohol. I hate the smell, the taste, the innocent vials they rest in, fooling people into thinking it's a harmless liquid.

...I hate the substance, but I can't hate the user...

I can't hate my Kurama. My fox.

...I asked him why he did it. I looked him right in his eyes in his moment of sobriety and asked him why he didn't pour the stuff down the drain. Why he couldn't just stop swallowing bottles of alochol and he smiled. He looked like he was going to break down as he smiled and told me he needed to forget...

He had too much to forget, though. There were far too many years for him to get rid of in so few hours of incomprehension. His cabinets were organized by the color of the liquor. He merely looked like a conissuer instead of an addict; someone who drank every once in a while, keeping it all for variety.

No one would guess he was an addict.

No one would look at him and those damned bottles and think he had to refill them every other day or so. They would think he's just the same old Kurama; elequent, calm, perfect.

How wrong they would be.

No one else knows. No one sees him the way I do. They don't see how he starts out in early evening, every evening, simply filling a glass and sipping at it casually, somewhat like a normal person would. I would sit there on the black leather sofa and watch him refill it until he eventually screwed the cups and came out with a bottle. He would barely talk. A few tears would run down his face, never bawling. He was in control of that one thing as I sat there, pretending to focus on the television as I pressed my lips together and wait for the inevitable spiral downwards.

A sick routine. A windup doll that never needed batteries.

Sometimes he did speak to me. Sometimes he would look at me like he didn't even know me and I would ask him questions. Sometimes several times because he would begin to tell me to get the hell out before he killed me. He never did. "Can you tell me what's wrong?" I asked, calmly, looking into the blurred emeralds.

And he did.

How much regret this soul lived with; no one would ever guess. They wouldn't think to look past the masks and see the drowning soul behind them. I didn't before that night he let his guard down.

He would talk about Kuronue, an old partner of his. He would shake his head and laugh with sobs in his throat as he told me.

"It's the only way I can silence them," he would say, staring into my eyes, occasionally glancing away as if I burned him, "I can't get the screams to stop if I don't do it. I can't get his damn eyes to stop accusing me. ...He won't stop blaming me. He's dead and he still blames me for everything!"

The glass would shatter in his hand. The bottle three quarters empty. A few times I tried to take it away from him. He always got it back.

I stopped trying to stop him.

I stopped trying to talk him out of it before he went into the liquor cabinets.

I only stayed to be support. I stayed there, on the sofa, to make sure he didn't do something that he wouldn't live to regret. I made sure the knives were gone, hidden away beneath the guest bed. And he never found them.

His laughter is what frightened me, disturbed me, the most though. The way he would cackle and talk to people I was too young to know of. He would scream at some woman named Arella, asking if he was good enough yet.

Other times he would clutch his head, whispering. Begging me to make them stop shrieking; he was afraid he was going to go deaf. I would tell him I was sorry and he would pick up the glass container again.

...Mornings, too, became a routine...

When he eventually fell asleep, usually around 2:30, 3:00 in the morning, I would carry him upstairs. I would neatly pull quilts over him, stroking his hair as he cried in his sleep. I could never silence that pain, I was never able to completely stifle the memories that haunted him so. I would clean up; everything had to be spotless. He couldn't know what he did during periods of intoxication.

He would wake up and shower for a half hour. Never a moment more or less. He would drink coffee and ask me the same question. "What do you want for breakfast?" And I would give him the same answer. "Oatmeal. I'll set the table up for you."

He would go to work, I would go to Makai for a while, trying to get some sleep and steal some money from Mukuro's vault. She knew I stole. She knew the home situation. She never mentioned it to me.

I would always come home before he did. I would sit there shaking, letting the tears fall down and tell myself to get used to it. It wasn't going to change. Half of me wanted to leave him; half of me was sick of his behaviour, his weakness in being defeated by the memories and pain that consumed him. And part of me wanted to hold him, help him through all this and help him cope with this. All of me loved him.

Clanging of glass would come later in the evening, after dinner, after we shared a pot of green tea.

...I hate alcohol...

END


End file.
